Coal is formed when peat is altered physically and chemically. The process is called 'coalification.'
Coal is especially important to West Virginia, because it is what its known for.Dead plans like ferns, would die and fall into a swamp, and bury itself under the marsh, causing it to be smothered. With no oxygen, this is how peat is made!
For peat to actually turn INTO coal, it must be buried by sediment. When being buried, it is completely squeezed of all the moisture in it, then, it compacts itself and becomes really hard and dried out, and that's how it turns into coal. All the elements are dispersed from this rock.
It is estimated that it took 10 vertical feet of original peat material to produce 1 vertical foot of bituminous coal in eastern and western Kentucky.
